First-time voter Molly Powers gets some guidance from Pearl River district Clerk Mary Flanagan on how to navigate the ballot during the school district's budget vote in May 2012.

Written by

| A Journal News editorial

Local school districts continue to chafe under the constraints of the state's 2 percent annual cap on tax-levy increases, and rightfully complain they are still waiting on Albany to delivery mandate relief. Taxpayers likely have a different thought: Where would we be without it?

This is the second year for school districts under the New York's property-tax cap - the so-called blunt instrument crafted by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature to lessen the annual hurt from raised property taxes. Property owners in the Lower Hudson Valley pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation, ...